Book update

It's been a while since I posted an update about my book. I wanted to again thank everyone who has purchased it. I released it in November as a fundraiser for the 2009 ITI, and the royalties have helped me pay for the entry fee, travel expenses, food and new gear. I received my 2008 W2 tax form from Lulu the other day. When I showed it to Geoff, he said, "You earned as much from your book in a tenth of a year as I earned in a tenth of the year, working." I didn't remind him of all of the long summer nights I stayed up until 4 a.m. pounding the thing out. I also didn't remind him that the sum only included the books that sold directly through Lulu, and not the boxes I've moved out of the house. Anyway, it's been a lucrative fundraiser, and I wanted to say thanks again.

I also wanted to thank everyone who e-mailed me in the past month with contacts at bike shops and book stores. I'm sorry if I haven't gotten back to you. I made the mistake of posting a request for contacts before I went to Hawaii, and came home to a flood of e-mails. I just wanted to let you know that I have saved them all and will be sorting through them in hopes of expanding my distribution when I have more time. Right now, the book (and any future projects) have been pushed far on the backburner, and that's OK.

A few readers have been nice enough to post reviews online. You can read them here:

Kent's Bike Blog
An Adventure Called Bicycling
Moronacity (not a book review, but a really cool essay just the same.)
The Accidental Athlete
Danielle Musto

UPDATE: Fat Cyclist (Thanks, Elden! Great timing.)
One Less Car

Finally, I want to apologize for the long delay in getting the signed copies of the book out during January. My trip to Hawaii, the fact that I ran out of a shipment before I expected to, and continued busyness all conspired to delay some purchases for a couple weeks. I should have all of the books out now, and I now have more in stock, so if you ordered my book in the past few weeks and you don't have it in hand by Friday, please contact me. The book is still available for purchase, the money still going into my hemorrhaging Iditarod fund. In a couple of new developments, I now have the eBook listed separately. It costs $8 and is available here. Also, Amazon.com approved "Ghost Trails" for sale, but they don't yet have it in stock. For those dead-set on purchasing it from Amazon (who, I will say, take their fair cut), it will likely be listed here in the near future.

I still receive the highest royalties from those who purchase a signed book directly from me, using the "Buy Now" button in the sidebar. I'll only be able to offer this option for the next two weeks. After Feb. 22 I will be in Anchorage and no longer able to process orders until mid-March.

Right now I am working on my gear list and will probably post it in the next few days. (Having it on record helps me more than anyone.) Stay tuned!

Facing the anxiety

Date: Feb. 8 and 19
Mileage: 42.2 and 12.1
February mileage: 219.9
Temperature: 34 and 29

Iditarod Trail near Burma Road, Jan. 28, 2006

"Of course, everything about today was exactly what I would expect of such an excursion. Temps were cold, but not unreasonably so. The trail was soft, but all-in-all better than I expected. Mt. Augustine decided today was the fourth of July, but all the ash headed south. Yes, today was a good day. An encouraging day. And yet, I feel the cold grip of this daunting task tightening around me. It could be my neoprene gear. But, no. I think it's the Susitna 100. It's going to be hard."

It's funny for me to go back and read this old blog post from a training ride before the 2006 Susitna 100. I feel like I could have written it today. There was even a volcano erupting (Mount Augustine) to parallel the current restlessness of Mount Redoubt in the near area. But this blog post completely denies a raw anxiety that I remember hit fever pitch after this January 2006 ride. I don't think I was ready to admit it to myself when I wrote this post.

Geoff and I drove from Homer to Palmer for the weekend, a trip almost solely dedicated to getting in one training ride on the actual race course. It was 7 below zero when we left Palmer, likely colder where we connected with the Iditarod Trail at Burma Road. We both rode full-suspension Gary Fisher Sugars. We stopped to play with tire pressure and I got really cold and struggled to warm back up. I tried to eat a frozen Power Bar, bit my lip and bled all over the front of my coat. We both crashed hard going down a steep hill and I broke my seat post bag. We rode for five hours. We covered 20 miles. I returned to Palmer bloody, shivering and completely, utterly spent.

Our friend Amity, never one to skimp on sweets, made us a celebration desert of three big homemade chocolate chip cookies topped with several scoops of ice cream. I ate the whole thing. I remember sitting on the couch with a horrible, sickening pit in my stomach thinking, "I am never, never going to finish this race."

Recent Snowslide Gulch avalanche as seen from Douglas Island.

Ever since I moved to Alaska, February has been my toughest month. Mid-winter blues and training fatigue, along with preparation and pre-race anxiety for the various adventure racers I keep signing up for, always add up to a month full of creeping malaise. The end result is worth it, in my mind, but the lead-up is sometimes difficult to bear.

This February, I can't even catch a break from the weather - which simply means that the weather hasn't cooperated with my training plans. It also means I haven't had a direct hit of sun in quite some time (It feels like weeks). Snow turns to rain turns to ice turns to snow, which has left nothing very rideable, trails or roads. I'm fusing my old job with my new job and I really do have less time to train, because the extra hours I'm working generally spill out into mornings. I've been bike commuting to work more often because the roads have been too treacherous for my wimpy little car. The actual biking is nice, but it often adds up to 10-12 hours straight at the office, and I never bring enough food and end up close to bonked before I have to ride home (I could probably plan better, but I haven't been shopping for myself in a while.) These are all just little problems, nagging issues, but they start to add up. I'm trying to keep my head above water, but it's hard to push it back sometimes ... that sinking feeling.

The 90-minute snowshoe run that made my day.

Going outside helps. A lot. My race and job anxiety seem to dissipate proportionally with the number of hours I'm able to spend traipsing through the snow. The continuous record snowfall that is literally smothering the city becomes alluring and beautiful up high. I walk and run with purpose, listening to the rhythm of my breath and feeling the movement in my muscles. It all seems so simple and I try to remember that the upcoming race, as big and complicated and scary as it seems right now, is just as simple.

"One foot in front of the other," I tell myself. "One pedal stroke in front of the other. Keep yourself warm, keep yourself fed, and keep moving. You'll get there."

I'll get there. Eventually.

Just missed it

(photo by Peter Bibb, stuck on the wrong side of a big slide)

Date: Feb. 7
Mileage: 19.8
February mileage: 165.5
Temperature: 39

Every once in a while, I have a rare but memorable day where I come home from a bike ride grumpier than I was before I left. Today was one of those days. I planned a short recovery ride, 20 miles on pavement, and the roads looked almost bare thanks to an overnight scouring by heavy rain. But because city road crews never actually scrape the shoulders, I had to ride my brakes over wet ice as a strong southeast wind pushed my back like a sail. After two miles of hardly pedaling on flat road, I turned onto the bridge to meet the crosswind. Unobstructed over the Channel, the gale pulled like an industrial vacuum toward traffic, blowing 50-60 mph steady. Steering was an exercise in futility, coasting a vehicular game of Russian roulette. I crawled off my bike and started walking, bike on the leeward side, until the wind ripped it right out of my hands and tossed it like a blanket against the pedestrian barrier. It didn't even hear it clatter amid the ceaseless roar. Daggers of rain pierced my cheeks. I moved the battered bike windward, leaned against it, and kept walking. I nearly turned around right there, but decided if I could just make it over the bridge, things would get better.

I churned out Thane Road directly into the gusts, but a least there the wind was buffered by houses and trees as it rushed along the steep face of Mount Roberts. Near the bottom of the second hill, my studded tires slipped and washed out on the wet ice. I went down, elbow first into a puddle. I swore out loud and picked myself up, holding my sore elbow against my side, dripping rainwater and grit as I made all the mental promises that I don't really intend to keep, but that make me feel so much better: Throw away the Nokians; Renew my gym membership; move far, far away from Juneau and never look back.

But because I get so stubbornly locked into things, I still fought the wind to the end of the road and turned around, playing Russian roulette with patches of wet ice as the gusting tailwind determined my speed. I had little choice in the matter, brakes and all. When tailwind gets overly pushy, it stops being fun.

And of course, grumpy as I was, I was thinking, "Can it get any worse than this?"

I rode the freight train of wind past Snowslide Gulch at about 12:15 p.m. I was probably in the shower when the avalanche came down at 1 p.m. It tumbled down the mountain like a rock slide, 300 feet long and 18 feet high, completely burying the road before settling into the sea. The debris effectively blocked off the community of Thane and its dead-end road from the rest of the world. Right now it seems that there wasn't anyone driving by when the slide came down, but in the Russian roulette game of life, that possibility is always there ... you never know ... it could happen to a random hapless cyclist who picked Thane Road because it's usually the most wind-protected area, who fell off her bike on the ice in nearly that exact area a mere hour earlier, who thought she was having a bad day ...

I guess it can always get worse.